Friday, November 15, 2013

Winter Landscape Gardening Tips

During the winter months it is very easy to just sit in the warm and not bother with your garden, but this is actually when landscape gardeners recommend that this is a good time to take out those plants that you believe give you problems in one of the following ways;

Difficult to maintain; High maintenance; Causing other smaller plants to become shaded; Overgrown; Needs too much water; Simply bored with the plant.

Any of the above reasons may be a good reason just to dig up the problem plant and dispose of it, during the winter it is much easier to dig up plants whilst they generally have less foliage, unless of course they are evergreens.

Due to the change in climate more landscape gardeners are taking a closer look at watering requirements and if hosepipe bans start to become more frequent in your area you may decide to take a closer look at areas requiring lots of watering. When using water hoses, provided they are not banned at the time, a long heavy use of the sprinkler system say once a week can be far more beneficial than frequent shallow hose watering.

Roots will generally go deeper into the soil if you use infrequent heavy watering programs whereas roots can be shallower into the soil if only a light watering regime is used. Obviously in the winter in the UK even in the area of Sheffield where rain is abundant you can preserve our water systems.

Due to the cold snaps we get in the UK it is best not to cut your grass too short during the winter months maybe leave your grass length about 25-40mm long and in the known shaded areas of your garden maybe 50-60mm long this will also allow the roots to grow deeper.

Most landscape gardeners will tell you one of the most overlooked points during the winter is not clearing leaves and garbage off your lawn, try and get out there and rake up those leaves and put them in your compost bin, ideally once a fortnight or whenever you see an excess of leaves on your lawn, you could also where spike shoes when doing this to help aerate your lawn, although beneficial it is not essential.

Finally Landscape Gardeners will also recommend that the winter period is an excellent time to clear out old mulch that is older than three years old, as this mulch is now probably ineffective at preventing weeds plus fresh mulch will also help preserve water in the soil.